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able that the long standing controversy between the carpenters and woodworkers will be adjusted by an alliance or amalgamation in the new department, and a number of other annoying contests between rival organizations may likewise be settled.

The fraternal delegates to the American Federation of Labor from the British Trade Union Congress, Messrs. Shackleton and Hodge, made some interesting observations while in this country during the past month. been elected by the Labor-Socialist combination in Great Britain, Both gentlemen are members of Parliament, having and they are hard-headed, practical workingmen who have had great .experience in the labor movement of the old world. Both men are agreed that the organized workers of America are far behind their European brethren in battling for political power. In Great Britain, they say, there has been few years. spread that the politicians have been thrown into a panic, and today The agitation for political action has become so widea tremendous awakening during the past Tories and Liberals are joining hands to beat back the socialistic propaganda. But the action of the old party leaders simply adds fuel to the flames. Meetings by the hundreds are being held throughout the kingdom nightly to stamp out socialism and the daily newspapers teem with columns and columns of "exposures" calculating to picture the horrible_conditions that would prevail under a socialiste representatives in Parliamnt and in local governing bodies I be The English delegates are hopeful that the labor largely increased during the next few years, while the popular vote is bound to be greatly angmented.

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The eight-hour strike of the bookbinders and printnessm is growing highly successful. As will be recalled the med Typo thetae of America, the employers' association in the that stands for the open shop and is affiliated w istic federation, made a desperate effort to preve ing an injunction against the pressmen in the at Cincinnati. The restraining order was grantes pressmen from voting to strike the Typothetar benefits on the ground that they would be T previously made by President Higgins wil ze to recognize the open shop and institute the However, the vote had already been ordered a and resulted in declaring a strike. The proceedings against President Berry court and attempted to have Presiden prisoned, but met with signal defea during the trial. It was brought pr the pressmen's officials by Er-s kowsky, who conducts the oficia created a sensation in the p kowsky were denounced expressed heartiest contemir and trusted by their organiza critical period. Meanwhir

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A gratifying outcome of the two years' battle in the printing trades, which has cost the workers upward of $4,000,000, is the probability that a printing federation, composed of a half dozen branches, will be established in the near future. Since Higgins has been deposed the best of feeling has prevailed between the officers and members of the printing crafts, and mutual assistance has been extended by the various branches during the last half year.

About the time the Review is issued the balloting for officers among the miners will have concluded. As is generally known, John Mitchell, because of ill health, refused to accept re-election and sought to drop his mantle over the broad shoulders of Secretary W. B. Wilson, who was elected to Congress in one of the Pennsylvania districts last year. Mitchell and Wilson have been close friends for years, and, feeling certain of the latter's promotion, another strong lieutenant of Mitchell, W. D. Ryan, secretary of Illinois miners, was put forward for national secretary. But Vice-President Tom Lewis, who has disagreed with Mitchell upon matters of policy quite frequently, and whose crowning ambition has been to fill the presidential seat, refused to be effaced and took the field against Wilson. A hard campaign has been fought throughout the various mining districts, as it was well understood that, aside from Mitchell's withdrawal from active work in the organization, either Wilson or Lewis would be retired with him, and these two familiar figures would disappear from the surface of the Miners' Union. At this writing it looks as though Lewis is elected, although later returns may change the tide that appears to be running against Wilson, who, if defeated, will have a desperate fight to secure re-election to Congress next year because of the prestige he will have lost. Despite denials to the contrary Mitchell is slated for a public position. For several years there has been some agitation in favor of establishing a governmental department of mines and mining under control of the Department of Commerce and Labor. At the coming session of Congress President Roosevelt is to recommend the formation of a department of mines and mining, and if Congress creates such a bureau Mitchell is to be appointed director of the department. At least that is what several high officials in the miners' union declare.

The injunction proceedings at Washington to restrain the American Federation of Labor officials from maintaining or publishing an unfair or “We don't patronize" list, and which was stubbornly contested by both sides, will be carried from the lower court to the United States Supreme Court. As is well known, the employers' associations who are supporting the Buck Stove & Range Co., plaintiff in the case, have collected an enormous fund to be expended with the specific purpose in view of outlawing all boycotts. On the other hand the A. F. of L. has levied an assessment on the entire membership for the purpose of defending the right to refuse to patronize unfair concerns and to make that fact public. It should be stated that a number of state and local courts have already decided the boycott illegal while others have held that it is lawful to boycott individually or collectively.

SOCIALISM ABROAD

ENGLAND.

The municipal elections which were held during November were widely reported in this country as a "defeat for Socialism." When the returns came in this defeat was found to be of the regular character. All other parties had combined against the Socialists and had thereby prevented any increase in the number of Socialist officers elected while the number of Socialist votes had increased.

Perhaps the livest thing in English politics at the present moment is the suffragette movement. The women who have taken up the fight for the right to vote are adopting the tactics which compelled so much attention last year. They are attending liberal meetings and raising disturbances that compels the police to eject them, and are preparing to make it decidedly warm for Parliament when it assembles. There is plenty of criticisms of these tactics. The general conclusion is that they are not polite and ladylike, but there is a tradition to the effect that revolutions have seldom been noted for these characteristics, and it is certain that more attention has been attracted to the subject of woman suffrage during the last year than in all the years that have been given up to "polite and ladyl'ke" propaganda.

GERMANY.

The Harden trial will not down. The flash light view which it gave of the rottenness of official society was just enough to rouse a suspicion that a further investigation would but show that this was a fair sample of all that lay beneath. On the assemblage of the Reichstag Bebel at once took up the revelations of this trial and gave the government several "bad quarters of an hour" in explaining.

Now it is announced that von Buelow's bloc of all the little reactionary parties, obtained at such tremendous cost in the last elections, cannot be depended upon, but is showing signs of dissolving at the first attempt to put any definite program through the Reichstag. Consequently von Buelow is already talking of resigning. Just who the Emperor could call to take his place in such an event has not yet been suggested. It might easily be possible that inability to form a government would compel anew elections, although this is not thought likely, since the German government is by no means as strictly on the cabinet plan as that of some other European countries.

RUSSIA.

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In spite of the fact that the most strenuous and repressive measures were used to prevent the election of any "undersirable" members to the last Douma, that body has proved to be by no means servient as the autocracy had expected. There are between twenty and thirty members of the Socialist Party among those elected and many of the remainder are strongly opposed to the government. These have taken advantage of the opportunity afforded them to denounce the Czar from the floor of the Douma until in one case the one speaking was mobbed by the reactionary members of the Douma. The first official action was in reply to the speech from the throne and in this reply the word "autocracy" was stricken from the form of address to the Czar. Famine and starvation are reigning over Russia today. The harvest of wheat and rye is fifty million bushels less than the average for the last five years. As a result of this, the price locally is raised to a great height. In the attempt to raise wages to correspond with the increased cost of living, strikes have broken out that are little more than desperate struggle against starvation. These have been met at once by the Russian government with a reply of "Cossacks, whips and lances." The Jewish Social Democratic paper, Hoffnung, has been again suppressed and six of its force imprisoned. Manuscripts and letters were discovered and confiscated.

BELGIUM.

The trade union conflict has extended to Belgium, the country that has always boasted the absence of any such problem. Individual unions have insisted on managing their own affairs. To some extent these individual unions are following the same policy of the Syndicalist movement of France and this Belgian phase is but a part of a movement that seems to be sweeping over all Europe.

BOOK REVIEWS

The Limit of Wealth, by Alfred L. Hutchinson. The MacMillan Co. Cloth, 285 pp., $1.50.

Just how such a book came to be issued by a house like MacMillan is something of a mystery. It is the sort of book that is usually “Published by the author" and consigned to the "freak shelves" of the library. It is one of the crudest possible sort of Utopias. A marvelous young man from the West discovers a remarkable scheme, elaborates it in a country school house, everyone is converted and the plan is adopted. It consists in limiting "the amount of wealth which a man may accumulate. Disintegrate the surplus beyond that limit, by having the Federal government collect it; distribute that wealth by having the Federal government inaugurate such enterprises as will not come in competition with existing industries, but which will give employment to the unemployed at remunerative wages."

The government then proceeds to build magnificent boulevards across the continent, to inaugurate a new system of education (the description of which enables the author to display his complete ignorance of all modern pedagogy), return the postal service to private ownership (where he can again prove his ignorance of the history and theory of the transmission of mail), to place all persons with the slightest anarchistic tendencies in a sort of cross between a boarding school and an insane asylum (the discussion of which enables him once more to expose his ignorance, this time of anarchy), and to abolish all trade unions and strikes, in the discussion of which he demonstrates more ignorance of the principles and practices of organized labor than it would seem possible for one man to possess in this day.

In fact the thing that impresses the reader is how a man could have lived and thought enough to have assembled as many words together on the social problem and known so little.

Not that there is absolutely no merit in the book. The author could not absolutely quarantine himself from all knowledge, and he congratulates himself upon the fact that some of the things which he suggests have also been advocated by others, and that some of them bid fair to be realized. This is inevitable. It would be wellnigh impossible to elaborate an imaginary society, some portions of which would not prove prophetic. But in so far as there is anything original in the book it is silly, and is one more horrible example of the danger of writing on a subject so technical as sociology without some knowledge of the literature of the subject.